Basketball Whoopie pies

Tonight we w'hoop'ed it up for March Madness with a little watch party featuring some basketball w'hoop'ie pies! The ideas comes from the March Madness Party BluPrint. I'd never made whoopie pies before, but loved the clever title for a basketball party. The Party Bluprint went with a more traditional chocolate pie, but I thought it would be super fun to attempt making them look like basketballs! After some trial and error, I finally got something that turned out ok!

Basketball Pies Recipe (adapted from Party Bluprints) Makes 12-15 pies

Ingredients:

Cake part:

Yellow cake mix

1/3 C water

3 T oil

2 eggs

orange food coloring (or in my case yellow, red, & brown coloring powder)

chocolate bark or candy melts + piping bag (or baggie)

Frosting:

8 oz. package cream cheese

1 stick butter

1t vanilla

3C powdered sugar

orange food coloring (or yellow, red, & brown mixed together)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. If you have a convention oven, use REGULAR bake (see my kitchen chemistry lesson for why). Combine wet ingredients (including food coloring) then pour into dry mix. Mix for about 2 minutes (medium speed if using a mixer)--don't over mix! 

Put about 1 T scoops onto greased cookie sheets (I found my stoneware pans worked even better *see additional post*) about 2 inches apart (a small ice cream-type scoop works really well).

Bake for 8-15 minutes. Ok, I know that's a big time swing for something like this. Most whoopie pie recipes I've seen say 8-9 minutes, but mine just weren't done in that time span. Don't know if it's the stoneware or what, but I had to do at least 13 minutes for the cake to be done on the underneath.

Once done, carefully remove with metal spatula & place on cooling racks. While those cool, melt some chocolate candy coating & place into a piping bag (or baggie). Then, turn those little orange cakes into basketballs! :)

You can decorate all the cakes or just half (for the tops), depending on how crazy ambitious you are! Put those in the fridge to harden. Then, make your frosting. Combine all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl until well mixed. Add food coloring until you have the desired orange color. Remove the cakes from the fridge. Put a large dollop of frosting on the flat side of one cake and place the flat side of one of the decorated cakes on top.

Then, you have a plate full of little basketball whoopie pies! :)

 

Perfect for March Madness or your kiddos' basketball team! :) 

*Linked to some of these great sites!